Listener Tales 112: Vacation!

Episode Overview

• Hosts Alaina Urquhart and Ash Kelley present a "Vacation Listener Tales" episode of Morbid, reading and reacting to four user-submitted stories detailing bizarre, gross, or paranormal travel experiences, accompanied by interjections from an off-camera electronic spirit box voice they call "Nicholas."
• The narrative progresses from a comedic disaster in the Scottish Highlands to an unexpected medical emergency and ghost encounter at a highway rest stop.
• The second half of the episode explores terrifying hotel stays in Sandusky, Ohio, and Chicago's historic Palmer House, prompting debates over whether the listeners experienced ghosts, demons, night terrors, or drink tampering.
• Listeners also receive updates on Alaina's upcoming novel The Butcher Legacy and an unsponsored review of the Paranormal Activity stage play.

Key Concepts

• Business Disclosures and Promotions: Alaina promotes pre-orders for her novel The Butcher Legacy (following The Butcher and the Wren), noting that the special edition includes interior art, sprayed edges, and annotated chapters in her handwriting, and that submitting pre-order proof via the link in her bio enters readers to win a custom blood-drip bookmark. Later, Ash mentions "Mighty Patches" while jokingly asking them to "sponsor us" (indicating no current sponsorship), and both hosts explicitly disclose that their enthusiastic recommendation of the Paranormal Activity stage play is "not an ad."
• Environmental Hazards of Off-Trail Travel: In the first tale, a listener traveling in Scotland in 2023 for her sister's 40th birthday (after a 2-hour tarmac delay in a Minnesota blizzard and witnessing the aftermath of a fatal antifreeze ingestion in Edinburgh) follows a sheep off-trail in the Scottish Highlands to find the Fairy Pools. She falls into a bog up to her calves and then up to her chest; while her sister pulls her out with a branch, the bog sucks off her new Rothy's sneakers, pants, and underwear. Having grown up in the Appalachian Mountains and fallen in a bog before, she knew to warn her sister not to step closer, and ultimately had to strip naked to spare the rental car's fabric seats—leaving her muddy clothes in a parking lot pile (explaining why other clothes were already discarded there) and taking a 1 to 1.5-hour shower plus a second shower once hot water returned.
• Benevolent Apparitions and Crisis Intervention: The second tale (submitted by Daniel from Upstate NY/Maryland while two pumpkin spice espresso martinis deep into writing his wedding vows) illustrates how a mundane crisis can mask a life-saving intervention. Driving a 100-and-something-mile highway stretch after Christmas, Daniel eats a Sheetz chicken sandwich with extra "boom boom sauce," suffers intestinal distress 15 minutes later, and clenches 6 inches off his seat for 10 miles (arriving in 5 minutes after 30 Hail Marys). In the rest stop stall, he chats with an older man in the next stall suffering from his "wife's chili," hands him toilet paper, and then hears the man gasp and sees his legs shake violently. When Daniel calls 911, paramedics find the adjacent stall empty, but discover and save a young man overdosing a few stalls down; police note an old man named William died of a heart attack there years prior, leading Daniel to wonder: "Did the ghost of this man appear to me so that I would get help for the kid that overdosed in the stall further down?" (Daniel now leaves flowers, toilet paper, and boom boom sauce on that toilet lid whenever he passes).
• Differentiating Paranormal Entities from Sleep Disorders: In the third tale, Tova (a 30-year-old who stays in hotels 3 times a month for work) returns to a Sandusky, Ohio hotel room where all the lights had turned on by themselves two weeks earlier. After turning off the AC to avoid a chlorine smell, opening the window to 58-degree air, and falling asleep at 20:00 (8:00 PM), she is woken twice by the sound of a doorknob turning, and a third time (over maybe 10 seconds) by violent doorknob shaking, the bed decompressing behind her, hot breath on her neck, and a man vanishing in her hallway when she turns on the lamp at 3:00 AM. While Tova's husband suggests a night terror, her mother-in-law suggests a ghost, and her mother suggests a demon, Ash and Alaina conclude it was likely a demon based on the lore that ghosts do not have hot breath.
• Evaluating Competing Theories for Sudden Dissociation: The final tale (from NYC tour guide and Queer in Sight co-host Cale, a 5-year fan since delivering for Amazon during COVID in 2020, which Ash notes was 6 years ago) examines an unexplained loss of bodily control during a week-long college theater trip with 3 fellow students at Chicago's Palmer House. After witnessing a trackless dresser drawer (open for 20 minutes) slam shut, close itself again in front of all 4 students, and a wall hanger swing on its own, Cale has 3 drinks at the bar on the final night (noting he is a "thick guy" and only tipsy). He wakes up walking down the hallway without contacts, locked out, consciously unable to stop his body from walking 2 floors up to urinate in a stairwell before coming to in the bathroom mirror after security lets him back in at 3:00 AM. Cale has spent 7 years weighing four unverified theories—lucid dreaming/sleepwalking, exhaustion with alcohol, ghost possession, or a spiked drink meant for college girls at his table—with Ash and Alaina strongly suspecting his drink was drugged.

Quotes

• At 1:48 - "If you pre-order the book, if you pre-order The Butcher Legacy, then you will be entered to win one of these. There's a bunch of people that are going to win some of these, and it's you just have to enter in—the link is in my bio—you just have to enter proof that you pre-ordered The Butcher Legacy, just your receipt, you know, that kind of thing, you got that, and then you'll be entered automatically to win." - Alaina explaining the promotional giveaway tied to her upcoming novel.
• At 9:19 - "So off to Edinburgh we drive with two fluorescent yellow bracelets on each wrist that say 'left side,' given by the car rental place to remind me which side of the road to drive on, along with the promise of our bags to be delivered at some point in time." - Alaina reading Listener 1's account of the visual safety aids used by Scottish rental car agencies.
• At 13:39 - "What happened next, you ask? My shoes, new Rothy's sneakers I might add, pants, and underwear decided they wanted to live in the bog." - Alaina reading Listener 1's description of the suction power of a Scottish Highlands bog.
• At 24:29 - "'What happened to the old man next to me?' I asked. 'There was no one in that stall, but we did find this young man a few stalls down. It looked like he was shooting up in there and he OD'd.' They said he was going to be okay, but that they needed to get him to a hospital immediately." - Ash reading Daniel's email about the twist discovery made by paramedics at the highway rest stop.
• At 25:01 - "The police officer recalled that an old man named William did die in this rest stop a few years ago from a heart attack under similar circumstances." - Ash reading Daniel's account of the police officer's explanation, which connected the vanished stall occupant to a past fatality.
• At 31:00 - "The seconds drip by when I feel the bed decompress behind me. You read that right, as if someone were trying to get into bed with me. Heat then fills the space between the back of my ear and neck. Someone is breathing on me, and I'm screaming." - Alaina reading Tova's terrifying tactile experience in a Sandusky hotel room.
• At 34:10 - "If you have not, or if you've heard of Paranormal Activity, like the stage play, and you haven't, and you're like, 'I don't know'—I'm not kidding you, it is one of the best things I've seen on stage. I think it's incredible, it's terrifying, and it was so fun. This is not an ad." - Alaina giving an unsponsored endorsement of the Paranormal Activity theatrical production, which caused Ash to sleep with the lights on.
• At 44:17 - "What's crazy about this is that in my mind, I was questioning what I was doing, but I couldn't stop myself. Like, I was questioning why I was doing, but my body was just walking." - Ash reading Cale's description of his dissociative episode in the hallways of the Palmer House hotel.

Takeaways

• Use visual cues when driving abroad: When renting a car in a country that drives on the opposite side of the road, wear bright indicators—such as fluorescent "left side" bracelets on both wrists—to override driving muscle memory and prevent accidents.
• Pack simple tools for hotel sleep hygiene: Light-sensitive travelers can carry painter's tape to cover bright electronics (like alarm clocks and microwaves) and use closet hangers with clips to pin hotel curtains tightly shut.
• Set firm verbal boundaries during unsettling events: As demonstrated by the college student Jamie in the Palmer House, calmly stating aloud to an unsettling space that you do not want the activity there and are going to sleep can serve as a practical psychological or paranormal boundary.
• Monitor drinks and recognize signs of tampering: Even when drinking in a group at a reputable hotel bar, guard your beverages against accidental swaps or spiking, and treat sudden dissociation or loss of motor control after a small number of drinks as a potential medical sign of a drugged drink rather than simple intoxication.